Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO)

What Answer Engine Optimisation is

Answer Engine Optimisation is the work of getting your business into the answer an AI tool writes, rather than into a list of links below it. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Copilot for a supplier and you get a short written reply naming two or three businesses. AEO is the practice of being one of them.

If that sounds like the definition of Generative Engine Optimisation, it is. AEO, GEO, AI SEO and LLM SEO are competing names for one discipline, and nobody has won the naming argument. We use them interchangeably and price them identically, because the work does not change with the acronym.

The only practical reason to care which term you use is that suppliers sometimes mean different things by them. Ask what is actually delivered.

Why ‘answer engine’ is the more honest name

Of the four labels, this one describes the change most accurately. A search engine returns places to look. An answer engine returns the answer, and decides for itself which sources to trust on the way.

That reframing matters because it changes what counts as success. There is no position to hold and no ranking to report. You are either named in the answer or you are not, and the same question can produce different answers on different days — which is why measurement works differently and why anyone quoting you an AI ranking score is overselling.

AEO, GEO, AI SEO — which should you buy?

Whichever the supplier can explain. The labels are interchangeable; the scope is not.

The test that actually separates providers: does the proposal include entity consistency and a review process? If not, it is not this service whatever it is called. We set out the full scope of GEO services separately, and the questions to ask before hiring anyone apply to us too.

What we will not promise

No guaranteed placements. Answer engines are probabilistic, the same question returns different answers to different people, and Google decides per query whether to show an AI Overview at all. Any supplier guaranteeing a spot is selling something they do not control.

And a fair share of this work is fundamentals you could do yourself: completing your Google Business Profile, making your details identical everywhere, asking customers for reviews properly. We would rather say so than bill for it — the cost guide is blunt about which parts are worth paying for.